I’m convinced that I am chronically deficient in a certain essential nutrient—Vitamin Sea. Living hours and hours from the ocean, I don’t get to the coast very often, but find my soul refreshed whenever I do manage to get there.
While dreaming of waves, I selected two Confetti Cotton blues plus the color Cloud for this quilt. My two oldest kids saw the pattern and thought it was really cool, so I decided to switch course and let them each choose a color to go with the Cloud instead. I thought it would be fun to combine their choices and see what happened. Of all the colors on the color card, they chose the very same colors I had previously selected, Cottage and Coastal Blue—the perfect aqua and a restful deeper blue. This ocean inspired quilt was meant to be!
Confetti Cottons in Cloud, Cottage, and Coastal Blue
Gorgeous colors!
Even better, there is a Bee Cross Stitch Basic that comes in the gorgeous Cottage color which became the backing for this quilt.
The internal debate was long and hard about how to quilt this. After auditioning (and agonizing over) several options, I settled on an extra fine polyester monofilament made by Superior Threads and used that in both the top and bobbin threads with a wavy stitch. Shiny quilting thread isn’t usually what I reach for, but I loved how the monofilament caught the light mimicking ocean waves as they sparkle in the sun. Hard to capture in photos! The binding was attached using the same wavy stitch. Typically, I like to hand stitch, but this wavy stitch on the binding is my favorite for fast and secure machine binding that somehow doesn’t drive my perfectionist nature up the wall.
The pattern, A-Maze Me, comes from the book “Modern One-Block Quilts: 22 Fresh Patchwork Projects” by Natalia Bonner and Kathleen Whiting. It’s a fun, striking pattern and it comes together quickly. It’s even faster if you strip piece, which I highly recommend for keeping such a geometric block nice and square. I’d like to make this pattern again!
